createTextField sequence

I have an array of menu items that I’m trying to display in a sequence with a short delay between showing each item in 3 columns. Without manually creating individual text fields and putting them on many frames, how would I do this with actionscript?

array item1
[1second delay]
array item2
[1second delay]
array item3
… and so on for 3 columns.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Jason